


Survivors Guilt

by raeofsunshin



Category: The Bifrost Incident - The Mechanisms (Album), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: DSA server no spoilers I'm watching you, Gen, Mentions of Sleep Deprivation, Odin's there for like a second, eldritch nonsense warning- lyf has a nightmare it does nightmare things, hello Ima try something different, nothing is dwelt on, survivors guilt (kinda obvious but is very much a thing)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28587228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raeofsunshin/pseuds/raeofsunshin
Summary: For a while- Lyf is alone. Mostly. There are always those looking to talk, not that they want to listen.----A.K.A. Rae thinks a lot about New Midgard and how Lyf did have a (presumably) pretty good life there, probably was reluctant to leave. Because they did leave everyone behind. Didn't they?Fun Times on a starship I have yet to name and don't think I will.
Kudos: 8





	Survivors Guilt

Lyfrassir was back at the office. Sitting in a desk they’d assumed was long destroyed. A file labeled “The Mechanisms” sits unopened on their desk. It’s exactly as they left it.

Fluorescent lights buzz overhead. This is- fine. This is normal, right? They hear the faint noise of office chatter outside their cubicle. _Wonder what everyone’s talking about?_

Lyf stood from their desk, picked up the file and slid it into a drawer. Their desk is the same. They were back in their uniform. This had to be a dream. _But which part was the dream?_

They walk down the halls of the transport police towards the source of conversation.

In the center of the common room their co-workers stood in a perfect circle, murmuring. Lyf approached, cleared their throat. A dozen heads turned towards them and the group parted silently to reveal the terror at the center of the room.

In the center was a roiling, bubbling rainbow mass, unforming and forming continually into the faces of the consumed civilizations of New Midgard. Each of their mouths tore into a silent scream. Lyf recoiled, but the circle of their coworkers had circled around them and the rainbow thing now. When they backed up they only hit the hands of their coworkers who pushed them back to the center, back to this _thing_ . It was attaining a solid mass now, forming _someone_. Circling co-workers were blending together into one solid mass of people. Hands and arms were forming in the rainbow chaos in front of them. Lyf was frozen in place, unable to move. There were hands on their arms, holding them still. Who they belonged to- they couldn't tell.

_‘Why did you leave us?’_

A thousand voices spoke in unison.

_‘Why didn’t you stay?’_

_‘Why did you leave us?’_

It shuffled through faces of people, some they knew, some they didn’t. Then it clarified.

“Why did you leave me?” Fria Lyresie spoke, crying, clutching her phone in her hand. Out of tiny, tinny speakers they heard their own voice playing. Those recordings, over and over. Overlapped and overlaid, ringing in their ears like a demonic chorus of their voice.

“Why did you go Lyf?” Her neck snapped sideways with a crack at a sickening angle, voices joining her in chorus as they advanced towards them.

Lyf couldn’t force an answer out of their mouth. 

Fria ~~_not Fria_ ~~ splits in two down the center of her face, grinning madly, splitting into two separate squamous things that spoke with her voice.

“You didn’t even have the decency to fail.”

Then the Bifrost surges forward consumes them.

\--

Lyf wakes up sitting in a cold metal chair, the noise of long fingernails clicking against a table echos throughout the room.

“Good, you’re here.”

Their eyes shoot open. Sitting calmly at the other end of a long conference table is Odin. She smiles at them, folds her hands in front of her on the table.

Lyf’s chair screeches as they push back to stand. _How-_ Odin simply smiles.

“Please, sit.” 

They look around the room. There are no doors. Only Odin, still staring at them from the other end of the table.

“You know why you’re here, don’t you?”

_There are no doors._

“Lyfrassir Edda.”

“What.” 

“So you can hear me,” Odin smiles when she speaks. “Good.”

“Fuck you.”

“Hm,” Odin frowns. “I’d be careful there.”

The room _tilts_. Lurches sideways, begins to rotate counter clockwise as if it’s become a tumbler. Lyf tumbles sideways off of their feet, lands harshly against the wall that is now the floor. The room continues to rotate, begins to pick up in speed as Lyf scrambles ever upward. Odin sits in her chair, unaffected by the tilting kaleidoscope.

“You have been chosen Lyfrassir Edda, you cannot run from us forever.”

Their vision fills with sparkling color, twinkling lights. Its almost- comforting. _No._

\----

A father holds his daughter close.

A woman runs through bloodied streets on broken heels.

A friend frantically pilots a star ship away from an all consuming world

\----

_Lyf? Lyf is that you? LYF!_

* * *

Lyf gasps awake on the cold metal floor of their ship. Lights flicker at the corners of their eyes and they jolt.  _ Signals.  _ It was just the lights on the ship’s display’s, warning them of the incoming stops.

They stand from the floor, where they’d collapsed hours earlier out of exhaustion, and stumble over to the ship's controls. In theory there was an AI. Lyf had been grateful for this, glad they had chosen a ship with some meger resemblance of companionship. It had been no help. It kept them alive, sure, but that was hardly praise.

Lyf would be better off dead.

“Where to?” Lyf’s voice is small and angry. It wouldn’t answer. It was better than continuing to talk to themself.

_ “Left.”  _ The ship’s AI responds. Lyf looks out the window to their left.

“Nothing is left.”

_ “Left.”  _ The ship’s AI repeats once more.

“No.” Lyf glares at- something. There is no place to glare at an AI, it is the ship.

_ “No.”  _ The synthesized voice gives no emotion.

“No! You’ve been no help this entire journey! A ship's AI is supposed to be helpful and neutral.” Their voice is full of pent up frustration. It had been decades, they’d been stuck in this ship for decades. Maybe they were imagining it- but then again they hadn’t slept in nearly two weeks beyond just now. Something different that they remembered this ship being. “You’ve been neither.”

_ “Have I now.” _

“Yes!” Lyf shouts, rainbow surges in the patterns spread across their wings. They are so tired. Nightmares are not a replacement for sleep. “Of course I got stuck with a fucking faulty AI.”

_ “Faulty.”  _ The automated voice is emotionless, but Lyf has learned to read a question from the slowly flickering lights of the ships displays.

“Faulty. No AI acts like  _ this. _ ”

_ “Lyfrassir Edda. I am not faulty.”  _ The ship shakes, rainbow creeps up the edges display screens. Lyf stares at it and speaks.

“Who are you.”

_ “Who am I.”  _

“Who are you. This-” they point to the rainbow, “Is not normal. My ship’s AI has clearly been replaced with someone.” They do not expect an answer, they’ve never got one before.

_ “You don’t deserve to know.”  _

“Tell me.” Someone was in their ship.

_ “I am what is left of those you left behind Lyfrassir. A forever reminder of what you could have saved. An eternal remnant of something that will never be again.” _

“Who. Are. You.” Their voice cracks.  _ No. Not this. _

_ “I am forever stuck in a state of half death Lyfrassir.”  _ The rainbow creeps ever faster up the walls of the ship. _ “You did this. You did this to me, did this to all of us.”  _ It crawls across the floor towards them.  _ “All of those you left behind to die. All of those you chose not to sav-” _

Lyf drives their fist through the monitor, watches the glass cave in under their fingers. The AI’s voice goes quiet. The rainbow halts. They are alone again.


End file.
